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Neoris, FWISD attempt to reduce truancy rates

Neoris, FWISD attempt to reduce truancy rates

BY GAIL BENNISON

September 24, 2004

Parents are receiving calls at home, work and on their cell phones when their children are absent from class, thanks to new technology from Fort Worth's Neoris.With an objective of reducing the district's truancy rate by 10 percent for the 2004-05 school year, the Fort Worth Independent School District has purchased Neoris ActiveSuite Intelligent Alert Manager (I AM).

Bill Richardson, CIO for the Fort Worth ISD explained that the district desires to continue its ongoing campaign to reduce truancy, and that Neoris has the most advanced technology for a complete communication strategy.

Neoris has two price offerings depending on the size of the school district. The cost varies depending on the type of module, whether the customer buys the hardware or software, or outsources the use of the software with Neoris acting as the host. “If you were to take the monthly scenario for a smaller district, the cost would be approximately $2,000,” said Kelly Short, business development executive for Neoris. “For a larger district, with 200,000 students, the solution could be as high as $700,000 depending on how they wanted to set it up.”Short said that districts that have a large truancy problem would benefit from the additional funding they will receive by putting students back in the classroom. “That is how the schools can justify this type of expenditure even when budgets are tight.

It's important to note that this solution is not just to combat truancy,” Short said. “It also enables the district to very quickly respond to security and weather-related events, and vastly improves the communication the district has with the parents. “As an example, teachers can use this tool to send messages to parents regarding their fifth-grader and his math test on Friday. This is a very flexible tool. The AlertManager provides its users the ability to respond more quickly to weather and security events by automatically detecting a tornado warning from the National Weather Service and alerting any schools in the path to take immediate actions to protect life and property.”Neoris spent three years in product development of this specific module. Costs of R & D were not disclosed.

Neoris, last week, had live demonstrations of the I AM during the 44th annual convention of the Texas Association of School Boards and Texas Association of Schools Administrators. As a digital enabler, Neoris changes the way companies conduct business by using digital technologies to capture profits. Clients include Lockheed Martin, GlaxoSmithKline, OfficeMax, Pemex, Cisco, Petrozuata, Luchetti and Verizon. Neoris is a privately held company with over 1,000 employees in the US, Europe and Latin America. For more information, visit www.neoris.com/am.

Posted by Kelly Short in Fort Worth, Texas on August 21, 2004 12:32 PM|Permalink
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